An organic label for milk is getting watered
down

The happy cow on the label of
Horizon organic milk is like a stop sign for consumers: Your quest
for healthy milk ends here. The back of the carton assures us that
Horizon milk is from certified organic farms, where clean-living
cows "make milk the natural way, with access to plenty of fresh
air, clean water and exercise."

At a Horizon dairy farm
in central Idaho, the cows don't look that happy. Four thousand
cows live in a stark landscape of sagebrush fields, long silver
barns and open-air sheds. Jammed in crowded pens atop the hardpan
of the Idaho desert, the cows are fed a diet of alfalfa, hay,
grains and soy, all certified organic. Only occasionally do they
eat fresh grass.

This isn’t the pastoral image of
cows grazing on a hillside that most consumers link with an organic
label, but it’s not against the law. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture’s vague organic standards state only that dairy
cows called organic must have "access to pasture." These cows in
Idaho eat grass for a few hours a day during the summer, and that
makes them, legally organic cows.

To the innovative
farmers who first pushed organic farming over 20 years ago, the
label was supposed to mean more than just pesticide and
hormone-free milk. "Organic" was meant to promise the healthiest
possible milk for the consumer and the environment.

"People are paying more for organic products because they think the
farmers are doing it right, that they're treating animals humanely
and that the quality of the product is different," says Ronnie
Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association, a network
of 600,000 buyers of organic food. "Intensive confinement of
animals is a no-no," she adds. "This is Grade B organics."

There is nothing in Horizon milk that would hurt anyone.
Even so, recent studies suggest that grass-fed cows produce milk
that is higher in Vitamin A and vitamin E, and has five times more
cancer-fighting properties.

Furthermore, these large
"confinement" dairies (another is Aurora Organic Dairy just outside
Denver) are a far cry from sustainable agriculture. On smaller
farms, the grass filters cow manure. On large-scale operations, the
thousands of pounds of manure are placed in concrete lagoons, where
the methane gas emitted diminishes air quality.

And what
happens when cows get fed grain? Critics say when the majority of a
cow’s diet comes from grain and other readily fermentable
carbohydrates, the rumen, (first of a cow’s four stomachs,)
becomes acidic, and the animals can become sick and die
prematurely. There is no evidence of this happening at dairies like
Horizon. Even so, though many dairy cows can live to be 13, Horizon
sells its cows to the butcher after six years, according to company
spokespeople.

Yet responsibility for defining what makes
a cow organic rests with the USDA, an agency not eager to exert
control. The USDA doesn't go out to every farm and give it a stamp
of approval. Rather, such grunt work is done by a hodgepodge of 97
state agricultural agencies, nonprofit groups and for-profit
companies.

While there are hefty federal penalties for
illegally stamping a dairy organic, the system is fraught with
potential conflict of interest. The pell-mell certification process
lacks rigorous and transparent oversight, and it's too easy for
certifiers to bend the rules, allowing dairies to stay in business
and keep the certifiers in the black as well.

The
National Organic Standards Board, a federally created advisory
board, has been working to strengthen both the regulations and
oversight of the certification process. But since a final organic
rule was released in December 2000, the USDA hasn't implemented any
of the organic standards board's more than 50 policy
recommendations. It’s required by law, yet the agency has yet
to create a peer-review panel to oversee the accreditation process.
USDA has also failed to create a program manual for certifiers that
specifies its rules and regulations.

If the USDA
isn’t going to guard the gate, then consumers who care about
the meaning of the organic label need to start paying attention;
they need to learn the story behind the fancy packaging.

Here’s some tips: Buy local when you can, talk to your
farmer, or join Cummins and other groups like the Cornucopia
Institute that are fighting to keep the meaning of organic intact.
There’s nothing really wrong with big business getting into
the business of organic food, but it’s important for us to
know that when a food like milk is stamped "organic," the word
means what it says.

Rebecca Clarren is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News (hcn.org). She writes about agricultural
issues in Portland, Oregon.

Note: the opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of High Country News, its board or staff. If you'd like to share an opinion piece of your own, please write Betsy Marston at [email protected].

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